Easiest way I found is to water heavily, cover with cardboard, mulch on top of that. The grass will be gone in a few months.

Black plastic works great. The grass will be dead in about 2 weeks. Clear plastic works in places like Texas with extreme heat and more UV light, but it does't really work here - it gets hot under clear plastic, and fries the tops a bit, but grass and weeds can survive under there for months. Landscape cloth doesn't work, either, it's too porous and enough light and moisture gets through there that the grass will continue to grow and just push it up.

Basically, anything that doesn't transmit light will work - black plastic, cardboard, scrap pieces of lumbe

Whatever materials are easiest to come by, is the quick answer. My experience echoes other comments "anything that blocks light". Cardboard 'melts' into the soil. Scrap pieces of lumber last for years - in my yard, they are shifted from place to place over the years, and often wind up in pieces in the compost pile. Black plastic is so easy to get .. by the roll ... but if not removed, while still whole [few years]it will shatter into a gazillion small annoying pieces.

Another material not mentioned, is thick 'slabs' of wet newspaper[covered with mulch]. These are best used in pathways where you don't want ANYTHING to grow.

I tried plastic (black) It is OK, had some problems but I did it in early spring with poor sun.

I use a torch now and do it within 2 days. (search for my recent thread on it)

People love the lasagna method. But what they don't understand is if all you got is grass ...where do you get the topsoil without buying it?

Buy a torch and start blasting. (tiller required though!)

take a look at our presentations, might save you some work and uncomplicate gardening for you.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens straw bale garden

We had some old corrugated tin roof panels and we cut them up into 18" widths and 4' lengths to cover parts of my garden paths where the weeds were getting out of hand. That worked really well. It took a couple of weeks in each area and then I could move it to another weedy spot.

When I make beds, I lay out cardboard to cover the turf, frame the bed on top of that, and fill with municipal compost (12 bucks a ton here, made from the bagged grass and leaves and chipped branches collected as yard waste).

Plant, water, viola! Instant garden, no grass. You can do the whole thing in one day if you have the energy and materials handy.

Thanks for all of the responses. I got some black plastic a couple weeks ago, and did some experimenting with it. It may not be faster than my digging fork method, but it's a lot less effort. I'm sure cardboard would work just as well, if not better because it's supposed to be good worm food. And I would have used it, but it would have taken me a lot longer to collect enough of it.

susan - I was worried about raising the temp too much. Since, like you said, solarization would kill stuff in the soil. And that didn't seem like a good idea.

gardenlen - I used straw bales last year. I was considering a thinner layer of straw for my new garden this year, but I was worried about slugs. Last year the slugs ate almost all of my tomatoes. But this year, I broke up last years straw bales, and spread them out. And the soil underneath is really nice. And I'm hoping all the garter snakes that moved in will keep the slug population under control.

I can understand not wanting to kill the 'good life' in the soil, but how does one kill nutgrass without killing everything else?

I put down black plastic on an old lasagna bed in early spring. Nasty creeping grass and weeds had started growing into the bed. I think it was down for a month. Originally I just meant to warm up the soil. A neighbor uses black plastic on old pasture when she starts new gardens and leaves it down for 6 months or so. Well, my weeds got kills so they were easy to rake off. The bed was topped off with a layer of well composted horse manure mixed with kitchen scraps and bedding. I found the source on Craigslist and he only charges $15 to load our utility trailer with as much as he thinks it can haul. I have tomatoes growing in the bed. It's a very hot summer yet I seem to find huge night crawlers when I did. I don't know how long it takes to kill the good bacteria etc in soil but mine survived. Maybe because it was early spring so it didn't get that hot.

My caveat about killing the good bacteria was just a reminder that you may need to amend the bed with non-organic fertilizer until the good bacteria recolonizes and the soil can break down organic matter into something the plants can easily use. It's not a reason not to do it if you really need to.

I think the black plastic will only heat the soil if it's directly in contact with it. I read somewhere on here that it can actually insulate the soil from the sun if it's not actually touching it. I put it over some tall grass, so it would block out the light without heating. I think clear plastic works differently, but I haven't done enough research to know for sure.

I want to do something to encourage more earthworms for next year, since they did a really nice job with the soil under my straw bales from last year. I think they liked the straw, but unfortunately, so did the slugs. Although a thinner layer might be alright.

"People love the lasagna method. But what they don't understand is if all you got is grass ...where do you get the topsoil without buying it? "

You don't need to buy topsoil. If you've got grass, you've got soil that supports plant life. Add some organic material (via lasagna if you like) and your plants can grow. My undertanding is that often, purchased topsoil is lesser quality dirt with organic material added to it. Same thing.

Merrybrook: when I lived in FL, the old timers said they would turn the hogs loose in fields with a bad case of nutsedge, over enough time the hogs would do a very good job of cleaning out the "nuts". There was one noticeable drawback to the hog method, the fields looked like a bombed out war zone full of craters from the hogs rooting for the nuts, made plowing a real pain. Got a hog?

I'm doing the lasagna thing for the first time this year. It'll be flowers, not veggies. I hope it works, because I'm trying to kill off a weedy mess.

I called a locallly owned appliance store for the cardboard. They told me that a particular two days of the week are the best times to come by. I've gone by twice and filled my station wagon with washer & dryer boxes both times.

I used the first batch to cover a large area that I wanted to mulch. It used to be an area with ugly grass/weeds between two of my flower beds that was hard to mow. It looks much better now, and my pumpkin & watermelon plants are enjoying crawling up into the area. No crabgrass has shown its nasty self so far. Early this spring, I did a similar thing with newspaper around my veggie beds, because I was tired of all the weeds growing into them. It's been fantastic all season - almost no weeding. The cardboard was a lot faster than the newspaper - it took practically no time to get it positioned.

I'm lucky in that a local horse owner leaves bagged horse manure free for the taking. But I've heard most barns will let you help them clean up in exchange for manure. (Gee.)

And at my local dump, I can get virtually unlimited grass clippings & leaves. I've heard calls to locally-owned landscapers will yield grass & leaves in the appropriate seasons. Sure, I'd love to know that they weren't treated with anything, but I figure in the end the benefit outweighs the risk. If you connect with landscapers, you have even more control.

A locally-owned coffee shop (getting the theme yet?) will collect coffee grounds for me if I just leave them buckets. I bought a couple at Lowe's for a couple bucks since I felt bad leaving kitty litter buckets (the ones I had handy) at a food establishment. Starbucks has a program for this, too - you can go into any Starbucks and pick up used coffee grounds. You don't get a lot of volume that way, but if you're driving by - heck, it's free.

Apply cardboard, then compostables. In my case, let it all overwinter and plant next spring. Sure sounds easier than the double-digging I did for my veggie beds! Especially when you consider all the granite rocks we had to haul out here in New Hampshire.

When I lived in the SF Bay Area, they used to use goats to control weeds along some roadways. People had herds & portable fences they rented out. I thought that was pretty cool.